Buyer's Guide

Tile outlives everything. If it's installed right.

No other floor lasts as long or handles water as well. And no other floor punishes a bad installation as ruthlessly. Almost every tile failure we're called to fix is under the tile, not in it.

Bathroom finished in 1867 Tile Murano glazed porcelain — shower, vanity and round mirror — from Advanced Flooring in Kitchener-Waterloo

Porcelain or ceramic?

Both are fired clay. The difference is the clay and the kiln. Porcelain is made from a finer, denser clay fired hotter and longer — the result is a tile that absorbs almost no water, which is the definition the industry actually uses.

Porcelain Ceramic
Water absorption 0.5% or less — the actual definition Above 0.5%, often much higher
Hardness Denser, harder, tougher Softer body, chips more easily
Chips Through-body porcelain is the same colour all the way down — a chip barely shows Glaze over a paler body — a chip shows a bright white scar
Freeze-thaw Rated for outdoors Indoors only — absorbed water freezes and splits the tile
Cutting Harder to cut and drill; slower install Easier to work
Use it for Floors, wet areas, entryways, anything outdoors, commercial. The default for a floor. Walls, backsplashes, low-traffic indoor floors. Great value where it's appropriate.
The short version: for a floor in a Canadian home — with meltwater, road salt and boots coming through the door five months a year — buy porcelain. Ceramic belongs on the wall.

Two ratings that decide whether the tile is safe and durable

PEI — how much traffic the glaze can take

Class Rated for
PEI 1 Walls only. No foot traffic at all.
PEI 2 Light traffic — a bathroom you enter barefoot. Not a hallway.
PEI 3 Normal residential floors — most rooms in most houses.
PEI 4 Heavy residential and light commercial. Kitchens, entryways, mudrooms — where the grit comes in.
PEI 5 Heavy commercial. Shops, lobbies, restaurants.

DCOF — how slippery it is when wet

Dynamic Coefficient of Friction. The industry benchmark for a floor that may get wet is 0.42 or higher. This is the number people skip, and it's the one that ends up in insurance claims.

Bathrooms & entryways
DCOF ≥ 0.42, and preferably a textured or matte surface. Small tiles mean more grout lines, and grout lines are grip.
Polished porcelain
Beautiful, and dangerous when wet. Keep it out of bathrooms and away from the front door, however good it looks in the showroom.
Shower floors
Mosaic, 2" or smaller. The dense grid of grout joints is what gives you grip underfoot — and lets the floor slope to the drain.

Natural stone: what you're signing up for

Stone is porous. That's not a defect — it's rock. But it means stone is a floor with a maintenance schedule, and people are often not told that before they buy.

Stone What to know
Marble Stunning, soft, and acid-sensitive. Lemon juice, wine and many cleaners etch it — a dull mark in the polish that a sealer will not prevent. Accept the patina or don't buy it.
Travertine Naturally pitted. Sold filled or unfilled; the fills pop out over time and want topping up. Warm, characterful, high-maintenance.
Slate Tough, naturally slip-resistant, handsome. Can flake at the surface. The most practical natural stone for a floor.
Granite The hardest and most stain-resistant of the four. Polished granite is slick when wet — use a honed or flamed finish on a floor.
Sealing All of it needs sealing on install and re-sealing periodically — typically every one to three years depending on the stone and the traffic. Skip it and the floor stains from the inside.
Modern porcelain reproduces marble, travertine and slate convincingly — including the veining, and increasingly the texture — with none of the sealing, etching or staining. Our 1867 Noon and ABL Ceramica Opulence ranges are exactly this. If you want the look rather than the rock, take the porcelain. We'll show you both side by side and let you decide honestly.

What's underneath is the whole job

Cracked tiles and cracked grout are almost never the tile's fault. Tile is rigid and brittle — it cannot bend. If the floor beneath it moves, something has to give, and it will be the tile.

Subfloor stiffness
The industry standard is deflection no worse than L/360 for tile — and L/720 for natural stone, which is twice as stiff. A bouncy floor over undersized joists will crack tile no matter how well it's set. Sometimes the honest answer is that the floor needs work before the tile goes down.
Uncoupling membrane
A layer that lets the subfloor move slightly without dragging the tile with it. It's the single best insurance against cracks in a wood-framed house — and it's what separates a proper install from a hopeful one.
Waterproofing
Tile and grout are not a waterproof assembly — water passes through grout. In a shower or wet room, the waterproofing is a dedicated membrane behind the tile. That membrane is the thing keeping water out of your framing.
Movement joints
A soft, flexible joint at the perimeter and across large spans. Tile expands. A floor tiled hard against four walls with nowhere to go will tent up in the middle — and it's an expensive lesson.
Large-format tile changes the rules. Anything over 15" on a side — our 24" x 24" and 24" x 48" ranges included — needs a genuinely flat substrate, often a self-levelling pour, and a large-format mortar with full coverage under the tile. Voids under a big tile are where it cracks. Lippage (one edge sitting proud of the next) becomes glaringly obvious at that size, which is why levelling clips exist.

Grout: the part you'll actually have to live with

Cement grout
Sanded for joints 1/8" and wider, unsanded for narrower. Affordable, easy to work, easy to repair — and porous. It stains, and it needs sealing.
Epoxy grout
Effectively stain-proof and needs no sealing. Costs more, and it's unforgiving to install — it sets fast and hard. In a kitchen, a shower, or anywhere light-coloured, it pays for itself.
Choosing a colour
Matching grout to tile makes the floor read as one surface. Contrasting grout makes a graphic pattern of it. Bright white grout on a kitchen floor looks magnificent for about a year — go a shade darker than you think, or use epoxy.
Never grout the corner. Where a floor meets a wall, or a wall meets a wall, that joint gets flexible silicone or caulk — not rigid grout. It's a movement joint. Grout there will crack, every time, and it's the number one thing we find wrong in a DIY bathroom.

Where tile wins

Bathrooms & showers
The only floor that belongs here. DCOF 0.42+.
Entries & mudrooms
Salt, slush and grit. Porcelain, PEI 4.
Kitchens
Bulletproof — but hard on your feet and on dropped glasses.
Commercial
PEI 5, epoxy grout, decades of service.
The honest downsides
It's cold and it's hard. Standing on tile all day is tiring, and anything you drop on it breaks. In-floor heat solves the cold half beautifully — and tile is the best possible surface over radiant heat, because it conducts.
It's loud. Tile reflects sound. In an open-plan main floor that adds up.
Repairs are messy. Replacing one cracked tile in the middle of a floor is a real job. Keep spare tiles from the same production run — colours shift between batches.
Installation is most of the cost. Prep, membrane, levelling, cutting, grouting. When a tile quote looks high, that's what you're paying for — and it's what stops you paying twice.

Reading a spec sheet

PEI rating Surface abrasion resistance, 1–5. PEI 3 minimum for a floor; PEI 4 for kitchens and entries.
Water absorption Under 0.5% = porcelain. It's the actual technical definition, not a marketing term.
DCOF Wet slip resistance. 0.42 or higher for any floor that may get wet.
Rectified Edges mechanically ground perfectly straight after firing, allowing very thin grout joints. Demands a flatter substrate — there's no wobble left to hide in.
Through-body Colour runs through the full thickness, so a chip doesn't show a white scar. Worth paying for in a high-traffic floor.
Shade variation (V1–V4) V1 is uniform; V4 means tiles vary dramatically from one to the next. Neither is wrong — but if you're expecting V1 and you get V4, you'll hate the floor. Always look at several tiles, not one sample.
Lippage One tile edge sitting proud of its neighbour. Standards allow a small tolerance; large-format tile and a flat substrate keep it invisible.
Coverage per box Add 10% waste — 15% or more for diagonal, herringbone or a room with many cuts. Buy the spares up front: dye lots do not repeat.

Keeping it looking new

✓  Sweep or vacuum, then mop with a pH-neutral cleaner. Tile is easy — grout is the part that needs attention.
✓  Seal cement grout on install, and re-seal every year or two in wet areas.
✓  Re-caulk the silicone corner joints when they discolour. That's maintenance, not failure.
✗  No vinegar or acidic cleaners — they eat cement grout, and they etch marble and travertine permanently.
✗  No oil-based soaps. They leave a film that dulls the glaze and turns grout grey.

Common questions

Why did my tile crack?
Nearly always movement below it — a flexing subfloor, a missing uncoupling membrane, a missing expansion joint, or a void under the tile from poor mortar coverage. A cracked tile is a symptom. Replacing it without fixing what's underneath just buys you a few months.
Can I tile over my existing tile?
Sometimes — if the existing floor is fully bonded, flat, and the added height still works at doors and appliances. It's often a false economy: you inherit whatever problem the old floor has. We'll tell you honestly which way to go.
Is wood-look porcelain any good?
It's excellent, and it's now one of the most-requested floors we install. All the water resistance of tile with a convincing wood grain. Worth knowing: long plank-format tiles must be laid with a modest offset — a running-bond stagger of about a third, not a half — because the tiles have a slight crown, and a 50% offset guarantees lippage.
Does tile work with in-floor heat?
It's the best surface for it. Tile conducts heat rather than insulating against it, so the system runs efficiently, and it eliminates the one real complaint people have about tile — cold feet on a February morning. If you're tiling a bathroom, put the heat in while the floor is open. Nobody regrets it.
White grout in a kitchen — bad idea?
With cement grout, yes. It will grey and stain, and you'll spend weekends scrubbing it. With epoxy grout, white is entirely viable. Pay the difference and forget about it.
How much do I need?
Length × width in feet = square footage. Add 10% waste, or 15%+ for diagonal and herringbone layouts. Buy a few spare boxes from the same lot while you can. We'll do the takeoff on a quote, including membrane, mortar, grout and trims.

A tile floor is only as good as what's under it

We quote the whole assembly — subfloor prep, membrane, waterproofing, tile, grout and trims — so the floor you buy is the floor that lasts. Come and see the porcelain range in the showroom.

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